


haven't decided about taking or leaving me

by erce3



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Battle of Bright Moon (S1), Canon Compliant, Character Death, F/F, Mutual Pining, Time Loop, but like. NOT PERMANENT, its a lot of like. implied theyre in love but theyre not in a place to be in a relationship, non permanent character death!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 23:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16690612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erce3/pseuds/erce3
Summary: Sometimes, Adora gets the feeling she's done this before.





	haven't decided about taking or leaving me

They fight in a multitude of ways every time, but there is only ever one outcome.

 

 

 

 

 

At first, it’s all too similar – Catra wakes up shivering in the crisp air, watching Adora hack off another tank with her sword, and breathes in. She’s never offered any other way to do this, and so her “hey, Adora,” becomes more polished than anything else she’s ever done or said in her life.

 

Adora’s shoulders always heave and the guilt, no matter how much Catra’s expecting it, is the same. It’s the look in She-Ra’s eyes, blank and angry, that flits across Adora’s expression – Catra watches Adora transform from herself to possessed in half a second and thinks, _if I hadn’t let her go to the Whispering Woods–_

 

She starts to notice, too, some other things. The first Catra realizes by the tenth time she’s woken up on that damn tank watching Adora, her knees bent and face dripping with water – Adora doesn’t know. There’s just the same hurt masked by the same determined face, the way she glows and, by the tenth time, Catra’s starting to wonder if it’s really the same girl she grew up with.

 

The beginning is almost always the same, so by now, she says, “Hey Adora,” cocky, slow, but tired, too. She hates fighting her, hates that no matter what she does, she can’t stop. It feels like it’s always the same – the battle ends and Catra makes the same _god damn choice_ every time and then Catra wakes up again in the same place, pushing off the tank as soon as Adora starts running.

 

The second thing she realizes is written across Adora’s face. There’s a moment in battle number two that Glimmer glitches and when Catra smiles, low and bitingly pleased, Adora flinches. It’s not the way Adora rushes over to her friend, not the way she scoops her out of the water, not the way she tucks Glimmer’s purple hair behind an ear. No, it’s the softness of her expression juxtaposed to the hard – maybe even scared – look she tosses Catra.

 

But Catra, by now, is used to scraps. Maybe it hurts to see Adora look at Glimmer the way Catra used to want her to, but she’s secretly pleased that Adora suddenly sees her as her equal. This is the second thing she notices: Catra isn’t second-best now.

 

She gets better and better at fighting Adora, too. It’s all too easy to predict, because Adora doesn’t know she’s repeating the same movements, and Catra learns her steps like a dance.

  
Sometimes, she avoids the way Adora looks at her, really looks at her, like Adora’s seeing the true Catra under years of disillusionment. It’s not in the nice way, just that when Catra became Adora’s equal she also became Adora’s enemy. In some versions, Catra thinks that maybe she should have never given Adora her sword back, that time in the fright zone. Maybe she should never have let herself become Adora’s equal, Adora’s enemy.

 

Catra’s not sure, by now, what exactly she’s supposed to be doing, what she’s supposed to have done. She thinks she’s doing something wrong. She must be doing something wrong – nothing repeats this many times unless the universe is trying to right some impossible deed.

 

The third thing she notices, is that no matter what Catra says – “Hey Adora” or “Good to see you again” or, once, desperate to stop fighting her, “Please come home” – Adora always comes for her first and initiates the damn thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, Adora gets the feeling she’s done this before. In one version, she’s watching Catra lean back as if she’s rehearsed, like she knew exactly where to meet Adora and how to position herself in Adora’s line of sight. It’s an impossible feeling to shake as she says, “Catra. Surprised to see me?”

 

Catra, in this version, watches her for a moment, like she’s reading her. “Not really,” Catra says, voice slow and tone much more casual than her searching gaze. But Adora doesn’t know what she’s looking for – something’s wrong here, she knows, but she can’t place what, and the thought disappears from her head almost the moment she thinks it. She shakes her herself slightly to clear the feeling.

 

There’s something that stings in the way the ever-confusing hopeful light in Catra’s eyes dies before Adora can say anything as Catra recognizes the confusion and its dissipation, the way Catra says, “I figured it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of you,” bitter, and Adora can’t help but think she means something else.

 

She loses that train of thought, though, as soon as they start fighting. Even though it feels like she’s done this before, Catra’s movements are entirely new, always one step ahead of her, and her concentration chases anything beyond survival away.

 

And so, when she wakes up in the same place as before the next day, she’s barely unsettled. There’s just a lingering feeling, like she’s forgotten something.

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re a wild thing,” Shadow Weaver used to tell Catra when she was small. Back when she held Catra from following Adora out of the training room to talk, back when Catra still shivered whenever she heard her hateful voice. “You know that,” says Shadow Weaver to an eight-year-old, to a five-year-old, to a seventeen-year-old, a brooding fourteen-year-old.

 

Only once does Catra respond. “I know,” she spits back, nineteen. Adora is gone and she keeps telling herself that she’s not afraid of Shadow Weaver anymore.

 

“Nothing could tame you,” purrs Shadow Weaver, undeterred and catlike in her slick smile. Behind her mask, her eyes are hard. She’s been tied up and held by Entrapta, but she’s not acting like she’s been usurped. If anything, Catra feels all her armour being peeled away and she’s five again, holding her breath. “Not even Adora,” adds the witch.

 

“Not even Adora,” echoes Catra this time, though she knows it’s not true.

 

“It hurts when a tamed thing is left, you know,” says Shadow Weaver as Catra walks away. “When a pet is deserted.”

 

“Good thing I was never a pet,” says Catra, and thinks of all the nights she spent curled up on the foot of Adora’s bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, while they’re fighting, Adora thinks of all times Shadow Weaver warned her about Catra. It’s nasty, maybe, to think of the twisted words of her maybe-mother-figure and apply them to the Catra panting across from her now, but Adora can’t help but wonder if maybe she should have expected this.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, once, and Catra narrows her eyes.

 

“Are you,” says Catra dryly, and stalks closer. For all the times they’ve fought, Adora is the most afraid now, as Catra licks her lips and edges towards her. “You don’t even _know_ what I put up with after you left. It was always just trying to make me join you, trying to convince me the Horde is evil.”

 

“It is,” insists Adora, and Catra holds her hand up.

 

“Shadow Weaver threatened that I’d suffer _your_ punishment, Adora, you know that? Because I didn’t get you back. Because I didn’t tell them you were She-Ra. You know what, Adora? The thing Shadow Weaver does? It fucking hurts,” she hisses, and Adora shrinks back. “It’s not about the Horde, Adora.”

 

“I didn’t know,” she whispers.

 

“I know,” says Catra. “You never knew. All I wanted–” a pause, while Catra swallows, “All I wanted was–”

 

“Catra, stop–”

 

“All I wanted was to make sure you were okay, Adora, I was always–”

 

“Catra–”

 

And then Catra whirls on her, pushes her claws against Adora’s throat. There’s a pause stretched between them, filled only by Adora’s heavy breaths and the beating loudly of her heart. “I’m not second best now, though, am I?” purrs Catra, and even though she’s smiling, it doesn’t meet her eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

In all the times they fight, Adora never takes Catra’s hand and goes back to the Horde with her – this stings for Catra the most, that she’s always hoping Adora will choose her. But instead it’s always _Catra, follow me_ and _they’re evil, Catra_ and _I’m sorry I turned you into this._

 

 

 

 

 

Adora used to wonder what would happen if Catra put in the time, the energy, wasn’t ganged up on by the rest of the team. She thinks about it only a handful of times now, when Catra digs her claws into her back and then jumps off. She’d never seen Catra as an equal, when it came to sparring.

 

She’s starting to wonder if she should have.

 

To be fair, Catra only beat Adora in sparring a couple times, back before Adora left the Horde and when they fought it felt much more friendly than charged with something else. The time she remembers best goes like this: Adora’s got her back flat against the floor and her chest is heaving, and when she points her chin up to look at Catra, she notices there’s beads of sweat trickling down Catra’s forehead.

 

This is unusual – Catra almost never lets herself break a sweat unless there’s a team of trainees ganging up on her. “Hey, Adora,” says Catra, voice sweet with her success, and digs in the pole against Adora’s chest a little more. There’s something in her expression Adora can’t quite place.

 

“Ow,” grits out Adora.

 

Catra moves the pole then, expression softening, and Adora takes her time getting up. Once she is up, though, she starts laughing and punches Catra lightly before draping an arm around Catra’s small shoulders. She’s pleased when she sees Catra’s concerned expression fades into a smirking one. “This was a one-time thing, you know,” says Adora, pretending to be nonplussed.

 

“Shut up,” says Catra. “I could beat you any day of the week.”

 

“No you can’t,” teases Adora, brushing a piece of Catra’s hair behind her mask. “You’re just lucky we’re on the same side.”

 

“We’re on the same side because I’d always pick you,” says Catra, and her tone is so serious that Adora blinks back for a moment, and then rests her hands on Catra’s waist. “I’ll always pick you,” says Catra again, softer, and Adora pulls her close, breathing in the smell of sweat and the sticky perfume Catra stole some time ago.

 

 

 

 

 

What Catra misses, most of all, is the feeling of Adora’s rough palms on her hips and Adora’s head nestled in the crevice between Catra’s head and neck and Adora’s fingers combing through her knotted hair and even the teasing way Adora used to chase Catra around the fright zone as Catra leaped from pipe to platform to pipe to platform.

 

 

 

 

 

“I was always a wild thing,” Catra tells Adora in one version as Adora pants, hands on her knees. Catra’s perched above her on a ridge, smiling in a crookedly unpleasant way and Adora isn’t sure why the phrase makes her insides ache. “But you knew that,” continues Catra, like it’s nothing. “That’s why you left me.” Adora has to squint to see the pain in Catra’s different colored eyes, but even before she goes looking for it she knows it’s there.

 

“You were my best friend,” amends Adora. “You used to draw me pictures.”

 

Catra’s nose twitches. “I always drew them for myself. You just stole them.”

 

“Like the ones on _my_ walls, on _my_ lockers, on _my_ arm,” says Adora, and for a moment she forgets the battle is raging around her. She laughs and her joints don’t ache so much, and her hair darkens just a bit as she blurs between Adora and She-Ra. “I miss you, you know,” she says, concentrating to keep her form up. “I’ll always miss you.”

 

But Catra laughs, and it isn’t so light as Adora’s. “I think we’re doomed to spend eternity fighting each other. You can’t miss me,” she says, tone bitingly bitter, and her claws unsheathe.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the Princess Alliance doesn’t pull through. For all the times she’s fought this battle, this is the worst for Catra. It’s the worst because she watches the light go out of Adora’s eyes, because for all Catra’s mean words and bitchy remarks, seeing Adora defeated hurts the most. The battle – Catra’s not even sure why they keep fighting it.

 

Netossa usually saves them, makes sure there is a net over the gem and Catra stalks around it, purrs that they won’t be able to stay there forever. Glimmer glitches red nervously, like a hiccup, and Bow holds her tight to his chest. But it’s Adora that gets her, every time – Adora is bent over and her hair spills over her face and for a moment Catra wonders if the claw marks on her back will be still there when Adora changes back to herself.

 

It’s that thought that changes the whole thing, the tangible feeling of Adora’s blood against her nails. “Get up,” she hisses, suddenly, and Adora shifts. “Get _up,_ Adora, or Hordak help me–” and Adora moves again, disjointed like she’s in pain, which she probably is, and guilt worms its way through Catra’s small intestine like she’s eaten something rotten.

 

“Catra,” rasps Adora, and Catra’s eyes flick to Glimmer, who’s watching the exchange nervously. Adora’s head raises slightly to meet Catra’s gaze, blond hair plastered to her forehead, but Catra keeps stalking around the net, sees Netossa start to waver.

 

“Get up,” she says again. “Get up and I’ll cover for you.”

 

And Adora’s eyes go wide, like she’s trying to figure out Catra, because she never quite paid enough attention to notice that Catra would pick her over this, over this whole god damn world if she had to. “Get _up,_ fuck, Adora,” she almost yells, and Glimmer sits up as if to defend Adora, except that She-Ra starts to glow again and the Adora goes out of her eyes and Catra thinks, _I’m so fucked._

 

It’s fine, though – she’ll defeat Adora for good next time. She won’t defect next time.

 

 

 

 

 

“Stop, please – I _loved_ you, Catra,” Adora tells her once, desperate to stall Catra a little longer. This time around, Catra is so angry that she’s just a little too violent, a little too cruel. Catra is desperate, too, desperate to be done with this whole thing, to stop dying, to stop fighting her best friend and then choosing her every time Adora begs. Her claws glint in the sunlight as Catra raises her hand. Adora breathes in, quick as if she’s surprised with herself, and then, more confidently: “You know that, right? I loved you.”

 

It works, though, in the sense Catra does stop, pauses, but doesn’t lower her hand. “Loved.”

 

Adora’s head bobs, up and down, up and down. “Loved,” she says, and catches Catra’s hand, traces her thumb across a claw.

 

 

 

 

 

Every next time is the same. The Horde always loses, and Catra always picks Adora.

 

Sometimes it’s Scorpia who pushes Catra over the edge. In those versions, Adora’s got her sword pointed up and her eyes are closed in concentration. Water sloshes against the base of her boots. She’s so still she could be a statue. Catra’s edging along the side of the battlefield, trying to see if she’s still breathing, trying to get close enough –

 

Scorpia gets there first. Her knees bend and then she pushes off a scrap of metal, probably what used to be a Horde weapon. The metal creaks. Her tail extends into a nearly straight line and then curves, flexing as something beads across the top. Something flashes in her eyes as she lands across from Adora, weapon drawn.

 

Adora startles, flickers between She-Ra and Adora. There’s a resounding clang of metal and Scorpia swings what Catra guesses used to be the muzzle of a tank against Adora’s sword as Adora jumps. She grunts as she’s pushed back and sediment is kicked up as her boots sink into the soft sandy bottom of the lake.

 

Catra heaves a breath, watches as Scorpia brings her arm up and then down with as much brute force as possible and Adora staggers. Her knees start to bend underneath her, and her expression is focused but pained. Scorpia raises her arm again and repeats the motion, physically beating Adora lower. But then – Scorpia’s tail snakes closer towards Adora’s side, and Catra finds herself starting to run.

 

Adora is squeezing her eyes shut as her form flickers and Scorpia takes the moment to swing towards Adora’s wrists. There’s a softer _thwack,_ the sound of metal against flesh and the flimsy pieces of armor Adora wears around her wrists. She gasps in pain and drops her sword, instinctively bringing her hands closer to her and exposing her side.There’s a splash and Scorpia takes a tiny step forward –

 

Catra twists towards Adora and jostles her out of the way with a grunt just as Scorpia’s tail comes down. She heaves a breath and makes determined eye contact with Scorpia, watches as Scorpia’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. "Catra!” she screams, in some versions, and in others Catra’s name gets swallowed by a cry.

 

It’s always too late.

 

She feels a prick against the small of her back, and Adora manages to twist out of the water with hair flat and wet against her cheek and stutter momentarily and look at Catra, really, truly look at her first in confusion, and then in worry. She pushes a piece of blond hair away from her forehead and her eyebrows knit together. Sometimes Adora says Catra’s name the way Scorpia does, and sometimes it’s a little softer, a little more broken. Like maybe Adora is losing a lot more than Catra thought.

 

Catra doesn’t mind dying so much; she knows she’ll just wake up in the same place anyway, usually with a brown birthmark like she’s carried it her entire life.

 

In other versions, Catra doesn’t defect so dramatically. Sometimes, Adora’s hanging from the rocky cliffs outside the castle and Catra’s got her by the hand, pretending to hide a yawn behind the other. In other’s, it’s Catra that’s hanging and digging her claws into the soft of She-Ra’s inner wrist. It doesn’t matter. Adora always says, “Catra, please–” and Catra always snorts at the cliche. The hanging Adora says, “I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you were lesser,” and the Adora that’s holding her up says, “I won’t let go.”

 

“Admit I could’ve killed you,” says the hanging Catra, without fail. “Admit I could kill you,” says the Catra who undoubtedly won’t drop Adora.

 

Adora always stiffens. There’s a long time in which she’s silent, neither pulling Catra up or being pulled up. She just hangs there, or lets Catra hang there, and they look at each other for a while, and she always looks like she’s trying to read Catra. “I should have never left you,” she whispers right as Catra thinks she won’t say anything. “I’m sorry I turned you into this.”

 

“It wasn’t you,” says Catra, annoyed. “It’s not always about you.”

 

“Catra,” says Adora, warningly.

 

There’s another long pause in which it’s Catra’s turn to eye Adora. She doesn’t bother trying to read her, though; Adora’s always carried her emotions blatantly. No, Catra searches to see if Adora really gets it this time. She looks, in some versions, if Adora notices subconsciously how familiar this scene is – they must have played it out at least twenty times by now. “Admit I’m your equal,” she always responds, voice edging the line between stern and pleading. “Adora, admit it.”

 

“You were always my equal,” Adora says in a placating way. And then, like a record: “I can’t do this without you.”

 

Catra pauses. “You want me to join the rebellion.” Then, like mirrors, Adora unfailingly pulls Catra up, or, when the situation is reversed, Catra pulls Adora up. They watch each other and Catra tilts her head up just enough to meet the gaze of the eight-foot unrecognizable form of her former best friend.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I won’t be easy. Your friends won’t appreciate it,” warns Catra.

 

“I don’t care,” says Adora, but something flashes through her eyes.

 

Catra doesn’t join the rebellion, not exactly, but she gets on her toes and whispers exactly what Adora needs to hear to win.

 

 

 

 

 

The fifth time the battle repeats, Adora holds a weak Catra close. Her back still stings from claw marks. “Why did you save me?” she whispers, so that Glimmer and Bow can’t hear her. Sometimes, she gets the feeling they’ll never quite understand the Adora from the Horde, the Adora that She-Ra leaves behind.

 

“This is going to be a hell of a birthmark,” says Catra, instead looking down. Her voice is faint and shaky. There’s a smoking wound on her shoulder from where Catra jumped in front of a tank so that Adora, distracted by something else, wouldn’t have been shot through – wouldn’t have _died,_ probably – but at least Catra has a foggy consciousness, and she smiles a soft smile. “I always save you,” she says finally, and coughs. Her eyes focus and unfocus. “You know that.”

 

Adora knows that isn’t true, thinks of all the times Catra has tried to kill her, and tries to shake the feeling she’s forgetting something.

 

 

 

 

 

Before Catra stopped showing up to the simulator on time, she would always strike out for Adora. The memories form themselves, sometimes, unbidden. They go like this: sometimes striking out means she’ll take a hit, and other times she’ll battle off another before they can even get close to Adora. It isn’t because she thought Adora couldn’t handle herself, though.

 

It’s because of the way Adora wraps her hands around Catra’s bruising wrist or chest or shoulder or thigh or foot, the way Adora places a soft kiss to Catra’s cheek, the way she murmurs, “I’ll save you, next time,” like saving each other is what they were made for. Like they’ll always save each other.

 

Adora has never been self-sacrificial like Catra is, though, and slowly Catra’s learned to take care of herself, so she starts showing up late, stops trying to hard. Adora never asks why, either, just accepts this as another part of Catra she doesn’t quite understand.

 

“We took care of each other,” says Adora the fortieth time they meet at Bright Moon. She’s standing over Catra, sword pointed at her chest and her eyes are swimming with some kind of regret. _I took care of you,_ corrects Catra silently, but she doesn’t bother to say anything aloud. “Please don’t make me do this.”

 

“Careful, Adora,” says Catra, instead, trying not to let her feelings get in the way of her delivery. “Get too distracted and your friends won’t have anyone to keep them safe.”

 

 

 

 

 

Once, after Catra’s saved her, Adora places a soft kiss onto Catra’s lips. Out of all the times Catra is dying, this is the only time Adora kisses her like this. Adora kisses her partially because she can’t shake the feeling that Catra _has_ died this way before. When they part, Catra’s eyes are wide, but she’s pleased with Adora. Adora can tell by the way the corners of her mouth lift up and snag on Catra’s bottom teeth.

 

And then Catra coughs, and Adora presses another kiss to Catra’s chapped lips and says, “Don’t go,” voice soft and pleading. Adora thinks of all the times they’ve fought in the past – when they were at the ruins, when Adora first defected, when Catra showed her the glinting Force Captain badge. “Please. Stay.”

 

“You, of all people, have no right to ask me that,” says Catra bitterly, and her expression twists into a dark one as she coughs again.

 

 

 

 

 

They fight in a multitude of ways each time, and only once does Catra not defect.

 

Only once is Catra not given the option to save Adora. In this version, Mermista appears, and then Sea Hawk, and then Perfuma, and Catra thinks – _great, another one where I die by Scorpia’s poison._ There are been so many versions of this damn battle that Catra can usually guess if she dies, can usually guess how she defects. In no universe, for example, does Adora understand why Catra is the way she is. In no universe does Adora acknowledge how much physical pain by Shadow Weaver’s hand as well as emotional pain she’s caused Catra, by leaving and just in general. In no universe does Adora leave by Catra’s side.

 

Either way. In this universe, Adora’s life isn’t threatened. Catra doesn’t get a chance to save her – when she fights her, she’s always expecting there’s a chance for redemption, doesn’t really mind when her claws dig into Adora and draw blood because she knows by now that it doesn’t matter, because the scars will disappear by the next time they fight.

 

This is the first universe, though, that Catra chooses the Horde. It’s almost unwitting. Scorpia hauls her off before she can do anything, and Adora unlocks some She-Ra rainbow power thing that restores balance before Catra can tell her how to defeat the troops she’s brought. Catra’s fucking bound to a tank by _vines_ and washed by a wave and so incapable of doing things that even if Adora were in danger, Catra couldn’t save her.

 

(This is the first universe, too, that Adora doesn’t ask for the last time for Catra to join to the rebellion).

 

It doesn’t matter. Catra doesn’t save her, doesn’t agree to defect, and she ends up going back to the Horde base with Scorpia instead.

 

But when she wakes up the next day, she’s in the same place, surprised, for some reason, with a newly appointed title of second in command, the sting of the Horde’s loss nestled deep in her chest, and the feeling she’s forgotten something very important.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the ep boygenius (salt in the wound)
> 
> thank u sooo mjuch to the people who like beta'd nd sat thru a lot of me talking abt this. this fic is intended to be like: Why Catra & Adora Aren't In A Place For A Relationship Yet, the dissertation. in short. its a metaphor. come talk to me at @figbian on tumblr (or yell at me lmao!) ! additionally. Validate Me Please w comments. thank u for reading


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